Thank you for the podcast. I wanted to transcribe most of it straight into my journal. (As a former GP, I always reference entries.) Early in my working life I was introduced to Paul Tillich's writing about "living on the border". Options on both sides, often easier to say "no I don't agree with that" than "why I agree with this." Also, I find the metaphor of "the body" helpful in all sorts of ways. One that struck me as I listened was that science tells us that the same chemical can have different effects in different parts of the body so be open to possibilities. The other is: I may be a biceps muscle so will never understand how you are the triceps we oppose each other. But, to in order to point a finger all muscles of the back, arm and hand may be required. May your church family find and celebrate which muscles you are and point to love
This is great. I really enjoy your honesty about life. Too many, in my experience, who put themselves out there for a public, gloss over the contradictions and confusions of embodied life. Mostly men, they don't talk about sex or sexuality, about desire and the unconscious: the facts of living an embodied life that so often get in the way of the narrative of their spirituality. Instead, what is on offer is an escape, the promise of a way to bypass the messy realities of embodied life. I hope you don't find your "filter" and instead continue to pursue an unflinching honesty about what is really going on in our lives. Thank you.
yes. thank you Elizabeth. i found belonging to a more homogeneous and middle class congregation hard work in different ways. yes, you get the feeling you are on the same page on most things, but when there come issues where there are differences, the tensions can feel harder to bear, and almost insurmountable, in a way i don’t think was true for congregations that are more diverse....for us the issue was never around LGBT stuff, but more the problem of having an old (highly capable) guard who resisted change, but viewed themselves as radical innovators! of course, they were at some point, but i think those who view themselves as radical rarely recognise when their behaviour becomes more conservative. they were in total denial x
Very grateful for you saying this so honestly without tying a neat bow on the messiness of it all. A good reminder that difficulty does not equal failure
This is so good, this call to love. Thank you for painting such an accurate picture of community -- it rings true for me. It also reminds me of Ivan Illich's call to love beyond our traditional ethos and ethnos, as demonstrated by the good Samaritan. (And Jesus!)
Twenty years ago, with two young children we moved into a household with another family of four. We were surrounded by veterans of communal life (Reba Place Fellowship in Evanston, Illinois USA / https://rebaplacefellowship.org/) and well supported. These were years of enormous personal growth.
Learning to do whispered marital "disagreements" behind closed doors, never knowing who else would be sitting at table at dinner, getting two first-born girls to love each other more often than they hated each other, having a homeless guest lock themselves in their room and refuse to communicate or come out for several days, learning to celebrate all sorts of things I would never have thought about celebrating, cleaning house together, doing other people's dishes, adjusting to other people's allergies, being forgiven and tolerated when forgiveness didn't actually change us, driving 30 miles in the middle of the night to pick up a housemate whose automobile broke down, etc etc. .... We eventually moved to another place when I became the pastor of the church and we needed a bit more privacy. But often I think we traded "sanity" for loneliness. "Humankind cannot bear very much reality." : )
By the way, discovering The Sacred was one of the highlights of 2023.
Thanks for this Elizabeth. As you know the pursuit of loving unity in the face of inevitable disagreement is an issue close to my heart. It's why I wrote 'Loving Disagreement' and the associated Unity Course. Forgive the shameless plug, but both are designed to help churches explore the foundational questions surrounding disagreement and to move forward in loving unity. I fear too many local churches will be ill-equipped to talk fruitfully about sexuality, in part because they don't have a decent theology of/for disagreement. (https://theunitycourse.co.uk/loving-disagreement/)
Thank you for the podcast. I wanted to transcribe most of it straight into my journal. (As a former GP, I always reference entries.) Early in my working life I was introduced to Paul Tillich's writing about "living on the border". Options on both sides, often easier to say "no I don't agree with that" than "why I agree with this." Also, I find the metaphor of "the body" helpful in all sorts of ways. One that struck me as I listened was that science tells us that the same chemical can have different effects in different parts of the body so be open to possibilities. The other is: I may be a biceps muscle so will never understand how you are the triceps we oppose each other. But, to in order to point a finger all muscles of the back, arm and hand may be required. May your church family find and celebrate which muscles you are and point to love
This is great. I really enjoy your honesty about life. Too many, in my experience, who put themselves out there for a public, gloss over the contradictions and confusions of embodied life. Mostly men, they don't talk about sex or sexuality, about desire and the unconscious: the facts of living an embodied life that so often get in the way of the narrative of their spirituality. Instead, what is on offer is an escape, the promise of a way to bypass the messy realities of embodied life. I hope you don't find your "filter" and instead continue to pursue an unflinching honesty about what is really going on in our lives. Thank you.
yes. thank you Elizabeth. i found belonging to a more homogeneous and middle class congregation hard work in different ways. yes, you get the feeling you are on the same page on most things, but when there come issues where there are differences, the tensions can feel harder to bear, and almost insurmountable, in a way i don’t think was true for congregations that are more diverse....for us the issue was never around LGBT stuff, but more the problem of having an old (highly capable) guard who resisted change, but viewed themselves as radical innovators! of course, they were at some point, but i think those who view themselves as radical rarely recognise when their behaviour becomes more conservative. they were in total denial x
Very grateful for you saying this so honestly without tying a neat bow on the messiness of it all. A good reminder that difficulty does not equal failure
This is so good, this call to love. Thank you for painting such an accurate picture of community -- it rings true for me. It also reminds me of Ivan Illich's call to love beyond our traditional ethos and ethnos, as demonstrated by the good Samaritan. (And Jesus!)
Twenty years ago, with two young children we moved into a household with another family of four. We were surrounded by veterans of communal life (Reba Place Fellowship in Evanston, Illinois USA / https://rebaplacefellowship.org/) and well supported. These were years of enormous personal growth.
Learning to do whispered marital "disagreements" behind closed doors, never knowing who else would be sitting at table at dinner, getting two first-born girls to love each other more often than they hated each other, having a homeless guest lock themselves in their room and refuse to communicate or come out for several days, learning to celebrate all sorts of things I would never have thought about celebrating, cleaning house together, doing other people's dishes, adjusting to other people's allergies, being forgiven and tolerated when forgiveness didn't actually change us, driving 30 miles in the middle of the night to pick up a housemate whose automobile broke down, etc etc. .... We eventually moved to another place when I became the pastor of the church and we needed a bit more privacy. But often I think we traded "sanity" for loneliness. "Humankind cannot bear very much reality." : )
By the way, discovering The Sacred was one of the highlights of 2023.
Blessings.
Thanks for this Elizabeth. As you know the pursuit of loving unity in the face of inevitable disagreement is an issue close to my heart. It's why I wrote 'Loving Disagreement' and the associated Unity Course. Forgive the shameless plug, but both are designed to help churches explore the foundational questions surrounding disagreement and to move forward in loving unity. I fear too many local churches will be ill-equipped to talk fruitfully about sexuality, in part because they don't have a decent theology of/for disagreement. (https://theunitycourse.co.uk/loving-disagreement/)